"Oh, I'm only a woman. It doesn't matter. Besides, they're not. I lead 'em by the ear--the big, red, floppy ear. Poor dears! They think I love 'em all."

"Whereas what you really love is the power within yourself to please them. You call it art, I suppose."

"Ban! What a repulsive way to put it. You're revenging yourself for what I said about the newspapers."

"Not exactly. I'm drawing the deadly parallel."

She drew down her pretty brows in thought. "I see. But, at worst, I'm interpreting in my own way. Not somebody else's."

"Not your author's?"

"Certainly not," she returned mutinously. "I know how to put a line over better than he possibly could. That's _my_ business."

"I'd hate to write a play for you, Bettina."

"Try it," she challenged. "But don't try to teach me how to play it after it's written."

"I begin to see the effect of the bill-board's printing the star's name in letters two feet high and the playwright's in one-inch type."

"The newspapers don't print yours at all, do they? Unless you shoot some one," she added maliciously.

"True enough. But I don't think I'd shine as a playwright."

"What will you do, then, if you fire yourself?"

"Fiction, perhaps. It's slow but glorious, I understand. When I'm starving in a garret, awaiting fame with the pious and cocksure confidence of genius, will you guarantee to invite me to a square meal once a fortnight? Think what it would give me to look forward to!"

She was looking him in the face with an expression of frank curiosity.

"Ban, does money never trouble you?"

"Not very much," he confessed. "It comes somehow and goes every way."

"You give the effect of spending it with graceful ease. Have you got much?"

"A little dribble of an income of my own. I make, I suppose, about a quarter of what your salary is."

"One doesn't readily imagine you ever being scrimped. You give the effect of pros--no, not of prosperity; of--well--absolute ease. It's quite different."

"Much nicer."

"Do you know what they call you, around town?"

"Didn't know I had attained the pinnacle of being called anything, around town."

"They call you the best-dressed first-nighter in New York."

"Oh, damn!" said Banneker fervently.

"That's fame, though. I know plenty of men who would give half of their remaining hairs for it."

"I don't need the hairs, but they can have it."

"Then, too, you know, I'm an asset."

"An asset?"

"Yes. To you, I mean." She pursed her fingers upon the tip of her firm little chin and leaned forward. "Our being seen so much together. Of course, that's a brashly shameless thing to say. But I never have to wear a mask for you. In that way you're a comfortable person."

"You do have to furnish a diagram, though."

"Yes? You're not usually stupid. Whether you try for it or not--and I think there's a dash of the theatrical in your make-up--you're a picturesque sort of animal. And I--well, I help out the picture; make you the more conspicuous. It isn't your good looks alone--you're handsome as the devil, you know, Ban," she twinkled at him--"nor the super-tailored effect which you pretend to despise, nor your fame as a gun-man, though that helps a lot.... I'll give you a bit of tea-talk: two flappers at The Plaza. 'Who's that wonderful-looking man over by the palm?'--'Don't you know him? Why, that's Mr. Banneker.'--'Who's he; and what does he do? Have I seen him on the stage?'--'No, indeed! I don't know what he does; but he's an ex-ranchman and he held off a gang of river-pirates on a yacht, all alone, and killed eight or ten of them.

Doesn't he look it!'"

"I don't go to afternoon teas," said the subject of this sprightly sketch, sulkily.

"You will! If you don't look out. Now the same scene several years hence. Same flapper, answering same question: 'Who's Banneker? Oh, a reporter or something, on one of the papers.' _Et voila tout_!"

"Suppose you were with me at the Plaza, as an asset, several years hence?"

"I shouldn't be--several years hence."

Banneker smiled radiantly. "Which I am to take as fair warning that, unless I rise above my present lowly estate, that waxing young star, Miss Raleigh, will no longer--"

"Ban! What right have you to think me a wretched little snob?"

"None in the world. It's I that am the snob, for even thinking about it.

Just the same, what you said about 'only a reporter or something' struck in."

"But in a few years from now you won't be a reporter."

"Shall I still be privileged to invite Miss Raleigh to supper--or was it tea?"

"You're still angry. That isn't fair of you when I'm being so frank. I'm going to be even franker. I'm feeling that way to-night. Comes of being tired, I suppose. Relaxing of the what-you-callems of inhibition. Do you know there's a lot of gossip about us, back of stage?"

"Is there? Do you mind it?"

"No. It doesn't matter. They think I'm crazy about you." Her clear, steady eyes did not change expression or direction.

"You're not; are you?"

"No; I'm not. That's the strange part of it."

"Thanks for the flattering implication. But you couldn't take any serious interest in a mere reporter, could you?" he said wickedly.

This time Betty laughed. "Couldn't I! I could take serious interest in a tumblebug, at times. Other times I wouldn't care if the whole race of men were extinct--and that's most times. I feel your charm. And I like to be with you. You rest me. You're an asset, too, in a way, Ban; because you're never seen with any woman. You're supposed not to care for them.... You've never tried to make love to me even the least little bit, Ban. I wonder why."

"That sounds like an invitation, but--"